Shàngqīng bādào mìyán tú 上清八道祕言圖
Shàngqīng Chart of the Discourse on the Essentials of the Eight Directions
About the work
A ten-folio Táng Shàngqīng illustrated version of the Bādào mìyán 八道祕言 meditation exercise drawn from DZ 1376 Shàngqīng tàishàng dìjūn jiǔzhēn zhōngjīng 1.11b–15b.
Prefaces
No prefaces in the source. The text opens directly into the first of the Eight Ways.
Abstract
Dated to the Táng by Robinet (Schipper & Verellen, Taoist Canon 2: 684, DZ 430). An illustrated meditation manual for the Bādào mìyán 八道祕言 — a Shàngqīng exercise organised by the eight calendrical jié 節 days, i.e., the eight “joint” or turning-points of the year (beginning with lìchūn 立春, the first day of spring, on which the adept at dawn faces north and watches for clouds of purple, green, and white — the three-element-palanquin of the Tàishàng sānyuán jūn 太上三元君 ascending to audience before the Tiānhuáng dàdì 天皇大帝). Each of the eight days is paired with a prescribed observation, an ouránique visualisation of the divine ascent, and a standing head-knocking confession on behalf of the practitioner and his descendants.
Translations and research
- Robinet, Isabelle. Taoist Meditation: The Mao-shan Tradition of Great Purity. Albany: SUNY Press, 1993.
- Schipper, Kristofer, and Franciscus Verellen, eds. The Taoist Canon: A Historical Companion to the Daozang. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004, 2:684 (DZ 430).